Katarina Johnson-Thompson believes she may have to set a personal best just to make the podium when she goes up against the Olympic champion Jessica Ennis-Hill in the heptathlon at the world championships on Saturday.
The pair have not faced each other in multi-event competition since Ennis-Hill ran away with gold at London 2012 with a huge score of 6,955 points. Over the two days of competition, the then 19-year-old Johnson-Thompson was too afraid to speak to her compatriot in case she interrupted Ennis-Hill’s focus but on the track she showed considerable poise and class to finish 15th on her senior heptathlon debut.
Johnson-Thompson has improved steadily since then, setting a world-leading score of 6,682 in Götzis last year and winning the European indoor heptathlon title in Prague in March but she believes she will have to improve again to get a medal – which will be harder still after a season where she has had knee and quadriceps injuries.
“It should be a really good battle with Jess,” she said. “But I reckon it will take 6,700 for podium and 6,800 for gold. It’s just whether I’m able to actually get them after the injuries I’ve had. I keep putting in different score combinations into my iPad and thinking: ‘If I have a real bad high jump then maybe I can run this in the 200m’ but I definitely think I’ll need 6,700 for the podium.”
Johnson-Thompson rated herself at about 95% fit after being injury free for the past month and is encouraged by what she is doing in training. “It is going really well, and all I can base it on is what the training is going like,” she said. “It’s just that competition practice I am missing. I don’t know whether come the day I will be able to deliver because I haven’t done many outdoor competitions this year. It’s not a gamble but I am going into the unknown. I feel I have been training non-stop to get to this place and I’m definitely mentally ready to compete, it’s just frustrating for me not to have that competition fitness.”
Having had her 2014 season ruined when she suffered an injury in the build-up to the Commonwealth Games, the Liverpudlian is eager to make up for lost time. “For me this is probably the biggest thing I am ever going to do,” she said.
But while Johnson-Thompson believes she is in shape to challenge for the gold she admitted the Canadian Brianne Theisen-Eaton, who won last year’s Commonwealth Games and the prestigious Hypo Meeting in May, is the rightful favourite.
“I remember her from [the 2013 world championships in] Moscow and she was really friendly,” said Johnson-Thompson. “I remember she was chatting away just before the 100m hurdles, and I was actually wondering: ‘Are you going to think about hurdling any time soon?’. She was chatting about her day and stuff then she came out and smashed it. So I think she is quite a relaxed competitor.
“But from what I saw last year in the Commonwealths and in Götzis she has got a determination about her that makes her very dangerous, and especially given the fact who she is married to [the Olympic decathlon champion Ashton Eaton] and the way she has progressed she is definitely the major threat and the major favourite to win gold.”
Ennis-Hill, meanwhile, said she has been hugely impressed with how Johnson-Thompson has improved since London 2012. “I obviously followed the athletics when I was pregnant and I was blown away by her performances and thought she was incredible,” she said. “I definitely sat there thinking: ‘Oh gosh this is going to be hard’. But it’s great and I think British heptathletes are some of the best in the world and it’s great to see we’re so strong and she’s got a great few years ahead of her.”
But will the pair talk to each other this time round? “At London 2012 I didn’t want to talk to her in case I got in the way of her focus,” said Johnson-Thompson. “I didn’t want to be like: ‘Oh Jess’ so I just left it to her. This time I think we will be able to talk but it’s not going to be like we’re around the dinner table or anything. We are very focused. So it will just be a word here or there about how hot it is, or what height the bar is on.”
